


Moving Backwards

by dovingbird



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Flirting, M/M, Terrible Descriptions of Pool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-09 22:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dovingbird/pseuds/dovingbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You promised me a date. Do you know that?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving Backwards

“You promised me a date. Do you know that?”  
  
“No, Jack, I don't have any recollection of that.”  
  
“...really?”  
  
“ _No._ ”  
  
“Oh.” Jack rubs the back of his neck with a little chuckle. “Don't scare me like that.”  
  
Ianto rolls his eyes as he gently blows into the coffee, cooling it a little, just enough to where Owen likes it whether the doctor knows it or not. “I doubted you would actually let me forget.”  
  
“Yeah, well...I don't see any reason to deny you the best date of your life.” He leans into the counter beside him, then, his eyes taking on that little hooded state that always stirs Ianto up. The bastard. “Do you?”  
  
“Best date of my life, eh?”  
  
“You doubting it?”  
  
“I've been on some pretty spectacular dates, Jack. Did I ever tell you about Fred?”  
  
“Fred?” He sounds so incredulous that Ianto can't help but push forward.  
  
“Yeah. He was this bloke I met in uni. Glasses. A ginger. Most adorable little tosser I'd ever met in my life, really.” He adds cream to Tosh's coffee, mentally calculating the amount to the exact droplet. “He took me to the zoo. Held my hand for the first time as we looked at the giraffes. Bought me a funnel cake.”  
  
“Did he try to grab your ass in the parking lot?”  
  
“Oh, no. He was a gentleman.”  
  
“A coward, you mean.”  
  
Is he actually jealous? Ianto tips his head down, hiding the beginnings of his smirk. “He knows better than to grab a man by the arse unless specifically invited.”  
  
“Is that so?”  
  
He's really not that surprised when Jack suddenly reaches out, smoothly tucking his hand into Ianto's back pocket. He doesn't even jump. Just turns his eyes to meet Jack's with a quirked brow. “Don't look so pleased with yourself.”  
  
Jack pretty much permanently looks pleased with himself. He doesn't respond but for a cheeky grin.  
  
Ianto moves out of Jack's range while looking for the saucers. They've been moved. He tries to remember the last time he saw them and recalls that it was when Jack snuck up on him after everyone else had gone home, when he'd ripped his pants open and pressed him against the counter and sucked him off in a matter of minutes from the sheer high of the surprise. The saucers had gotten a wee bit messy and Ianto had charged Jack with washing them right before he went home, trying to pretend his legs weren't so shaky. “Where the hell did you put the saucers?”  
  
“The what?”  
  
“The saucers, Jack. For your coffee.”  
  
“Oh.” He opens a cabinet above Ianto's head, where saucers should be exiled from ever being. They were very precariously perched. “Here you go.”  
  
Ianto curses under his breath as he begins taking them down and putting them in their proper place.  
  
“So. Date. What do you say?”  
  
“What do you have in mind?” Ianto asks, pretending that every ounce of his attention is on these saucers and getting them perfectly stacked, even when his ears are practically vibrating just to hear a single word from Jack.  
  
“Well, I thought about it a lot last night, actually...”  
  
He's always a little struck by awe that he comes up in someone's mind. _Anyone's_ mind, really, though Jack's certainly takes the cake. He's such an enigmatic figure in Ianto's life that him wasting any time whatsoever on him is just ridiculous. “Is that so?”  
  
“Mm-hmm. So I started trying to think about what things you must like. Now, I figured a fancy dinner might top that list. After all, you're always so impeccably dressed, head to toe in those incredible suits of yours...” Do Jack's fingers brush as gently as a whisper against the small of his back as he slides past him to grab a napkin, or is Ianto making that up? “...and then I remembered...that you only started wearing those suits consistently after I told you how nice they looked.”  
  
Ianto wants to curse again. He was _really_ hoping that Jack wasn't going to remember that.  
  
“So I thought about what you wore the first two times I ever saw you. Jeans. A nice-fitting shirt. God, you looked good.”  
  
Ianto licks his lips, keeping his eye on the tea he just made. Gwen has an affinity for sugar cubes. He's very careful about how many he adds.  
  
“Which makes me think something more casual is probably your game.” He pauses. “What's your poison, Ianto?”  
  
“Poison?”  
  
“You never go out with us. Never hit up any of the pubs. So fine. What do you drink?”  
  
He shrugs. “I don't.”  
  
“Seriously.”  
  
“Not a lot. Not anymore.”  
  
Jack is silent. He wants more, but he's going to be polite enough not to push.  
  
Ianto decides to be nice and give him what he wants, even as he feels a slow burning sting right at the base of his chest. “...Canary Wharf, when...when it happened...I was passed out, dead pissed, from a long night of debauchery.”  
  
“Good word,” Jack murmurs, more a hint for him to go on.  
  
“Barely even knew what was happening. Got left alone because they all thought I was a corpse. And then when I finally was roused, when they found me, when they herded me to begin my... _upgrade..._ everything went to pot. And I found Lisa then.”  
  
Jack is silent.  
  
“Pub might not be the best idea.”  
  
He nods. “All right. No alcohol. No pub. But what about...”  
  
Ianto looks up. “Yeah?”  
  
“...how do you feel about sticks and balls?”  
  
Silence. Ianto blinks a few times. “...a-are you saying-”  
  
“Have you ever played pool before?”  
  
Oh. “Oh.” He blinks again before looking down and arranging the cups and saucers on a cocktail tray. “Not in quite some time.”  
  
“Well, I think we need to go, then.” Jack bumps shoulders with Ianto gently, companionably, and leans a little closer, close enough where Ianto can smell those addictive pheromones of his, all heady and musk. “But you have to promise me something?”  
  
Ianto meets his eyes with a half-smile. “I let you win?”  
  
Jack chuckles and shakes his head. “No.” He glances down, letting his eyes take a slow jaunt over Ianto's figure, just slow enough that he could swear he's using his hands instead. “...you wear the jeans you wore when we first met.” Just an inch closer. “I wanna check out your ass all night.”  
  
Ianto swallows hard.  
  
“Tomorrow night? After work?”  
  
His mouth's a little dry. But he manages a nod anyway, flicking his eyes back down to his tray.  
  
“See you then,” Jack tosses over his shoulder as he saunters away. And if Ianto happens to check out his arse right then, then so be it. It might has well been an open invitation.  
  
~~  
  
He doesn't wear the jeans to work. That just seems like a bad plan, especially since he can just hear Gwen teasing him for wearing them all the livelong day if she finds out _why_. As Gwen, Tosh, and Owen start packing up, Ianto tugs a satchel out from under his desk, and Jack gives him a smirk that he can feel from all the way across the room.  
  
His jeans are freshly ironed and clean. He hopes that's okay. He was careful to wear a shirt to work that would complement the dark denim, so that's fine. When he tops it all off with his coat, he feels like he looks borderline handsome. He brushes a hand through his hair to lighten it up a little before he wanders back into the main room.  
  
Jack is waiting, leaning back against Gwen's desk. It is quiet. Everyone else is gone. Ianto's shoes click against the metal grating and Jack flicks his eyes over, starting at Ianto's feet and working their way up. He fights the urge to twirl for him if he's going to look that intently.  
  
When Jack finally meets his eyes, he's grinning. “You're gonna outshine me tonight, you know that? Everyone's gonna be checking you out, trying to buy you drinks...”  
  
Jack never does know how to give a compliment, really, but it touches Ianto nonetheless. He smiles as he wanders down to him. “You'd better tell me your favorite drink ahead of time, then,” Ianto murmurs, cocking his eyebrow. “I'll just give you all the drinks they buy me.”  
  
Jack's grin widens. “Trying to get me drunk already, Ianto Jones?” He chuckles. “I never knew you had it in you.”  
  
“Do I really need to get you drunk, though?” he teases. “You've always seemed perfectly willing to me.”  
  
“Are you calling me a slut?”  
  
“Maybe.”  
  
“Well, you'd be right.” Jack closes the distance between them, until they're just an inch apart. “You're lucky I'm a man of my word, Ianto, or we wouldn't go anywhere tonight. We'd just stay in.”  
  
Jack looks playful right now, his eyes sparkling, his dimples growing even deeper. A playful Jack always means for interesting games. Ianto's this close to telling him they don't have to go anywhere before he remembers that he chose this outfit very particularly, and they might as well go out to show it off. “Are you driving?”  
  
“I'm nothing if not a gentleman.” Jack gives him a quick peck on the cheek before leading him to the door, them walking side-by-side.  
  
The drive is quick. They don't go to a pub, as Jack promised, but they do end up in a small hole-in-the-wall establishment that Ianto's always driven right past, never really knowing that it existed. There may be a bar in the corner, but there's more so TVs and pool tables everywhere, low lighting and smoky air. But the air isn't terrible. The smoke smells sweet, and Ianto finds he's rather fond of it.  
  
Jack touches a hand to the small of his back to guide him toward a table, one that the game seems to be ending at. He's claiming him one touch at a time. Ianto can think of several people, men and women both, that he's been out with that would have gotten annoyed as such an action, but Ianto? He likes the reminder that he's wanted. That he's claimed. That if he starts up a conversation with someone else that night, Jack will get more than a little huffy and pouty.  
  
Would he go out of his way to be actively jealous and controlling? No, probably not. Hell, the most Ianto can see him doing is picking another man to flirt with to make Ianto equally as jealous (maybe blond, maybe blue-eyed, maybe with a slightly psychotic gleam in his eye...God, what did Jack see in that man? Minus his arse. Maybe that's all it was. Jack seems to have a thing for arses). And that's one of the reasons that Ianto likes him. He's betting that if they actually became a thing, not just fuck buddies when the nights get long and the offices get lonely and quiet, they would still be able to be their own people. To have their own lives. Jack is such a sassy exhibitionist that Ianto gets the feeling that him _without_ his own life would end in him shutting down and going mad.  
  
His subconscious considers how much of an exhibitionist Jack might actually be, and that's enough to make his thoughts shut down for a moment.  
  
When an enthusiastically offered pool stick almost pokes him in the eye Ianto grabs it and blinks. “I rack, you break?” Jack asks. Not that he waits for an answer, really. Before Ianto can even agree he's already corralling all the balls together and trapping them in the rack. He knows what he's doing. Every ball gets its specific place. He places it just so on the table.  
  
Ianto glances over Jack and tries to figure out why he never saw this sort of pool shark air about him before. He's in trouble, isn't he?  
  
“Wanna put some money on this?” Jack asks as he slides his coat off and drapes it on a nearby chair.  
  
Ianto knows better and fears for the safety of his wallet. “No money.”  
  
“No?”  
  
“Something else.”  
  
“You have something in mind?”  
  
Ianto considers as he leans his hands into the edge of the table, biting his bottom lip. “...we make a bet per shot.”  
  
“What are we betting?”  
  
“Whatever we feel like. Depending on the difficulty of the shot.”  
  
“What _ever_ we feel like?”  
  
Ianto meets Jack's eyes. He's crossing his arms over his chest, standing with his hip cocked out, that little smirk on his lips. Ianto arches his eyebrows. “Whatever we feel like.”  
  
Jack considers this. “...how about we make the bets for each other?”  
  
“What, we choose what the other person does if they make their shot?”  
  
“If they _miss_ their shot.”  
  
The thought of putting that much power into Jack's hands was both nerve-wracking and exciting. Ianto licks his lips and thinks. “...are you brave enough to go in on that?” he ends up teasing.  
  
Jack chuckles as he grabs his own stick, tossing it into the air and catching it in his other hand. “All right, Jones. You're on.”  
  
~~  
  
He trapped himself in this. He really did. He had that feeling of foreboding, the realization that Jack knew exactly what he was doing, and yet he'd walked right into it just in time for them to get a pretty decent crowd watching them play.  
  
Good job, Ianto Jones. Fantastic fucking job.  
  
He'd been bet into a number of kisses of various lengths, into singing “God Save The Queen” at the top of his lungs, and into having to make a difficult shot with Jack's hands in both of his back pockets. That one hadn't been very fair. He could've made the shot with just that going on, most definitely, but feeling his breath wafting across the back of his neck had just not been fair.  
  
And Jack? He'd gotten every single bloody shot. Hadn't missed a single one. Ianto was starting to consider hating him.  
  
Considering it. He had a feeling that actually putting it into practice was going to be hard.  
  
“What are you wearing under that shirt, Ianto?” Jack asks. Ianto is leaning down, eying the shot he has to make, and there's Jack hovering just behind him, one hand touched to the small of his back and gently fiddling with the fabric. It does a grand job of distracting him.  
  
He has to hover there for a moment before he remembers exactly what Jack asked. “...an undershirt?”  
  
“Dammit.” Jack chuckles. “All right.” He lines himself up right behind Ianto, touching one hand to his hip and the other to one of his arms. This isn't fair. Ianto isn't even drunk. Jack shouldn't be able to give him tingles just by being flush against him like this. “Miss this shot...and you have to take off your shirt. All right?”  
  
Ianto squeezes the shaft of the stick a little harder, swallowing. “All right.”  
  
“Go on, then.”  
  
Jack steps away, but the musk of him is still in the air, swirling around like the smell of smoke and beer. This is _beyond_ unfair. Ianto studies the shot a little longer. Considers his options. And then shoots.  
  
When the required ball comes to a stop less than an inch away from the hole, Ianto comes very close to faceplanting.  
  
The crowd of people around the table erupt into dissension, a shower of “OOOOOH” raining down on him, and Ianto feels his cheeks flush. He can't even look up, not even when Jack comes over with a chuckle and plucks the stick out of his hand. “All right. Come on, then.”  
  
“Have I mentioned how much I hate you?” Ianto mutters as he stands tall.  
  
“Maybe a little.” Jack watches Ianto's fingers fumble with the first button for only a moment before he reaches out and begins working at them instead. But he's slow. Painfully slow. He pops every button after a long moment of thought. He makes sure that his fingers press into his chest ever so slightly every time before a button is opened. He makes sure that Ianto is flushed and breathing harder and staring right into Jack's eyes before he tugs the shirt from where it is tucked into his jeans and opens it.  
  
Jack slowly smirks.  
  
“I really hate you,” Ianto murmurs.  
  
“I know.” Jack brushes the shirt off of Ianto's shoulders and glances down over him, taking in how he looks in his simple white undershirt. He doesn't look terribly displeased.  
  
“I look like white trash now,” Ianto complains.  
  
Jack chuckles. There's a certain level of conscientious effort in how he folds Ianto's shirt, just the once, just making sure that the wrinkles will be held at bay, but Ianto still feels an incessant urge to take it away from him and find somewhere to hang it up. “ _Handsome_ white trash. The kind that inexplicably gets famous and makes a shit ton of money.”  
  
This isn't very reassuring.  
  
Jack snags Ianto by a belt loop and pulls him in for a kiss, one of those long and luxurious ones that sends tongues of flame straight down Ianto's spine and makes him groan. He barely has the presence of mind to put his hands on Jack's chest and push him just a breath away. “That wasn't part of the bet.”  
  
Jack grins. “You complaining?”  
  
Ianto's become convinced that any other dates with Jack will probably end up killing him.  
  
~~  
  
One last shot, and it goes to Jack.  
  
Ianto feels like he must look relatively mussed at this point, missing a shirt and having his hair messed up every which way. One particularly embarrassing lost bet led to one of the ladies in the crowd applying a thin ring of eyeliner to him, and Ianto refuses to meet eyes with anyone after that. He's a professional, damn it. A very intelligent man who could have been quite successful if he just hadn't decided to go the Torchwood London route way back when this all began. And now what is he? A made-up man in a wifebeater who smells like smoke and booze and sweat and nothing else. He should be taken outside and shot at this rate, he's such a disgrace.  
  
He's given up on Jack ever missing a shot at this point. Three games, and he's won every single one. But it's late and the establishment's getting ready to close, and so Ianto decides he might as well propose one last ridiculous bet before they split ways for the night and see each other in the morning, because there's no way in hell that Ianto's letting Jack take him home when there's so much cleaning up he has to do.  
  
“All right, Jones,” Jack drawls with that grin of his again, leaning against the pool table. “What do you got for me?”  
  
Ianto considers his options. But only for a moment. “...if you miss this shot...you let me fuck you.”  
  
Jack cocks an eyebrow and speaks with a certain amount of bored sarcasm. “Really?”  
  
“But I get to be on top. And I get to be in control. And I get to dominate every inch of you. All night long.”  
  
It's a silly bet. Jack is a notorious top. Even when he's let Ianto feel like he has some semblance of control, it's never lasted very long, not really. Ianto's smart now. He knows that Jack isn't into anything else. If he was, wouldn't he let them mix things up every once and a while?  
  
Jack watches Ianto for a long moment of silence, an undefinable expression on his face. And then he nods. “All right. That's fair.”  
  
The crowd quiets down as Jack leans into the table and judges his options. He cocks his head to the side. He bites the tip of his tongue. And then he lets his shot fly.  
  
He completely misses the ball. Doesn't even get a kiss on it. The cue ball bounces around the table ineffectively, and a complete and total silence covers the room.  
  
Jack tosses the stick to someone nearby and picks up his coat. “Game over, Ianto.” He grins wider. “But only if you take me home.”  
  
Ianto's not really processing the situation. He stares blankly at Jack as he tosses on his coat and drapes the discarded shirt over Ianto's shoulders. It's only when Jack takes his hand and literally starts dragging him toward the door that he comes back to the present. “You missed.”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“I can't believe you _missed!_ ”  
  
“Yeah, well, it happens.”  
  
“Did you do that on purpose?”  
  
Jack glances over his shoulder. “Does it matter?”  
  
“Well...yes! Yes, of course it matters.”  
  
“Then you'll never know.” Jack reaches and bops the tip of Ianto's nose, just the tiniest little tap. “Use your imagination, Jones.”  
  
They're both terribly late to work in the morning, and Gwen and Tosh whisper to each other and giggle while Owen just complains about not having his coffee. And if Jack happens to limp a little when no one else is paying attention, then so be it.


End file.
